Ronald quickly started to wash his nose with water, and it took him a while to clean it. No wonder the Actors Guild in America did not allow the use of smoke and heated powder for lighting. This pollution was too serious.
"Two intentional murderers were charged with manslaughter? What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese Americans killed a white man, they must
Go to jail, maybe spend a lifetime in jail... There is something wrong with this country."
"Huh?" Ronald was wiping his face with a towel when he suddenly heard the Chinese guest named Lily Chen say something like this on a TV talk show.
Ronald simply walked out and sat by the bed to watch TV. What on earth was going on?
"Let's take a look at the whole story..."
It turns out that in June of this year, in the automobile city of Detroit, Chen Guoren, a young Chinese man who worked as a draftsman for a Detroit automobile company, was having a bachelor party before his wedding at a local striptease bar. Two white father and son mistook him for being Japanese.
The man insulted him and tried to hit him with a chair.
Chen Guoren knew martial arts and beat the white man and his son on the spot, then walked away.
A white father and son worked at the Dodge factory. The production line they worked on was about to lose their jobs due to the acquisition by Mitsubishi Motors. The two found Chen Guoren, a part-time employee, at a nearby McDonald's and began to call him a Japanese devil, causing the white man to lose his job.
One of them then grabbed Chen Guoren, and the other hit Chen Guoren on the head with a baseball bat until Chen Guoren fell to the ground.
McDonald's employees took Chen Guoren to the hospital. Chen Guoren was pronounced dead four days later.
"The Detroit District Attorney only charged the two suspects with second-degree murder, refusing to use the citizenship law to use racial discrimination as a basis for conviction, and based on the plea bargain, the two suspects agreed to charge second-degree murder with manslaughter.
will be removed from the charge..."
"Lawyers and senior jurists across the country deny that the racial discrimination clause in the Citizenship Act can be used for this crime. Only the newly established 'American Citizens for Justice League' is willing to appeal for this. Dear viewers at the scene and those in front of the TV,
If you have any opinions to express, please..."
Ronald thought for a long time before he figured out the logical relationship. A Chinese named Chen Guoren was beaten to death by two white men thinking he was Japanese.
Then the prosecutor and the judge believed that the deceased was of Chinese descent, and the white man called him Japanese, and there was no racial discrimination here. They did not apply the racial hatred clause in the Citizenship Act to prosecute first-degree murder, and only agreed to prosecute him for manslaughter.
There must be a big problem here. It seems that white people in America still don’t treat Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people with different skin colors and hair colors as citizens from the bottom of their hearts. As a Chinese in his previous life, Ronald
I feel very uncomfortable.
He picked up the phone and called his accountant, Lawrence Wang.
Lawrence is also concerned about this matter. New York's Chinatown feels this matter is very unfair and wants to organize donations and relief.
Ronald asked him to donate a thousand dollars anonymously on his behalf to the American Citizens for Justice League, which spoke out for Chen Guoren and her son, to express his support.
When I returned to the set the next day, it turned out that no one was talking about the Chen Guoren incident.
Ronald still spent a day on the set of the bar set, and today he was filming Cynthia Rhodes' dance sequence.
Cynthia herself is a dancer, so her dance does not require a stand-in or post-editing, making it easier to process the storyboard during filming.
It’s just that her makeup and clothes are really ugly. Cynthia was originally a southern belle, with blond hair, a pretty face, and a slim figure.
Wearing a black vest and shorts, with a very short hairstyle, she danced a very tough dance, with a deliberate upward shot...
Ronald felt that the beauty was photographed a bit like Grace Jones, a black Jamaican singer/model who is famous for her unique (ugly) temperament.
Cynthia's strong southern female characteristics of gentleness and carefreeness were minimized, and she was transformed into a neutral temperament that is indisputable between male and female.
"Do you have to vilify the supporting actress in this way to highlight the beauty of the heroine?" Ronald touched the beard that hadn't been shaved in a few days.
"cut." Adrian Lane stopped after a dance. "Very good, this one is printed."
Cynthia Rhodes came out happily, but the assistant handed her a towel to wipe off the water on her face.
Ronald saw that the makeup artist had deliberately applied olive oil on her body, like a bodybuilder, to highlight her compact muscles. This was not a sexy dance at all, but a curious dance of a female bodybuilder.
"Give her a bath towel." Ronald instructed, and then said to Cynthia, "Director Ryan has finished shooting this scene. Go to the dressing room and wipe off the oil. Be careful not to catch a cold."
"Thank you, Ronald." Cynthia was a little surprised by Ronald's sudden concern, and then immediately showed a cute smile, "Do you think I dance well?"
"Of course, your dancing rhythm is very good and powerful."
"Then will I have a chance to be a heroine in the future?"
"Ha, it's hard to say. But your appearance is quite suitable for filming."
Ronald, this is not nonsense. Film shooting is very selective about the appearance of the actors. Although beauties with inappropriate looks are very charming in life, on the screen, the audience will feel that the actors on the flat screen have plain and unattractive looks.
Cynthia's face is the same as that of ordinary dancers, thin. There is also a small depression under the cheekbones. Such a face shape is particularly easy to cause shadows on the face. When watching it on the big screen, the audience will feel that it is sculptured and three-dimensional.
sense and beauty.
"Really?" Cynthia is already twenty-five years old, but she was born in a family with a strong religious atmosphere in Nashville, the south, and she still has an innate sense of innocence.
"I don't need to lie to you, but whether you can be the protagonist or not depends on your luck."
After the filming ended in the evening, director Ryan and Ronald, and the two producers Don and Jerry, had another task, to look at the samples.
There is an industrial film shooting base in Pittsburgh. Many industrial films for induction training and technical training for major companies have been filmed here. The printing factory is not far away, and you can see the samples shot the day before every day.
"Buzz..."
The noise of the projector slowly filled the room, and Ronald sat in the back, watching the samples on the screen that had not yet been synchronized with audio and video.
The director is quite capable. Perhaps because Ronald shot and edited a feature film himself, he is now more and more able to discover why other directors have such intentions in storyboarding.
The scenes of the main character Alex's dance double Ma Lin were shot like this on purpose. The rhythm of each section of the dance interlude was exactly in line with the internal rhythm of the several shots shot.
Moreover, Director Ryan did not use dream references like Ronald. Instead, he used pre-imagined editing scenes and then worked backwards to determine the shots that needed to be shot.
For example, the shot of Ma Lin sitting on a stool with her two long legs stretched forward can be matched with the last part of the main song in the interlude. The previous dance music has a relatively fast rhythm, but in the last few bars of the main song, the rhythm of the music gradually becomes more intense.
Slowed down and prepared for the climax of the chorus.
Then there is this shot of reaching out to pull the rope to pour water, which is just the right time to hit the drum beat for the main and chorus transition.
First imagine the final scene, and then shoot backwards. This is a very essential creative method in this song and dance scene.
"shxt!" Director Ryan cursed in a low voice.
Ronald also discovered the problem, and several scenes of Ma Lin's dancing were revealed.
The white high-illumination background on the stage is very bright when photographed from the front.
At several points, during brief pauses in Marlene's dance, the camera captured her face so that the audience would know that it was not Jennifer Beals who was dancing.
"Are you going to reshoot? Or use editing to remove these embarrassing scenes?" Ronald raised the issue of editing, and Ryan had a headache.
"There are too many, and these few are useless. And if we reshoot such a long dance scene, it will be difficult to ensure that it will not be confused again."
Ronald touched his beard again. The storyboarding method in the dream was actually similar to that of Ma Lin's dance. However, the lighting in the dream was very dark, a low-illumination lighting method. Ma Lin's face in the lens was in
In the shadows, even if you take a photo from the front, it won't show off.
Because Ma Lin is always in motion, and the dance also occupies most of the audience's attention, it is difficult for the audience to spot the stand-in as long as they don't pause and look closely like a video recorder.
Ronald was reminded of Coppola's film "Old Love, New Love". Many of the dance scenes in it were done in low light. Moreover, he pioneered a method of making the actors' faces be
Colored lighting methods.
Under traditional Hollywood lighting methods, it is emphasized that the actor's skin color, especially the face, must maintain the original skin color.
But Coppola was ingenious and used red and blue lights to reflect the actor's skin color into red and blue. In this way, not only can the dance scene be photographed in low illumination without using white lights, but the color of the face can also be used.
to reflect the character's heart.
The wet chair dance in the dream used this method.
No wonder Hollywood always calls Coppola the "director's director". He always makes some experiments on the edges of the film's expression methods, trying to find a way for other directors.
Sometimes he succeeds, with audiences accepting his trendy approach and box-office hits like "Apocalypse Now."
Sometimes, before the audience can accept it, it becomes a box office bomb, such as this "Old Love, New Love".
But other directors can undoubtedly take advantage of the path he has blazed and move forward.
“Adrian, have you seen Francis Coppola’s ‘Love Is Old’?”
"you mean?"
"Can the white background light be changed to low illumination, so that Ma Lin's face can be immersed in the red neon light in the foreground and the blue light above. In this way, in many shots, Ma Lin's body can become a silhouette.
The audience could see the dance moves, but the illumination wasn't high enough for them to tell that the stuntman who was dancing fast wasn't Beers?
And if this is the case..."
"And in this way, we can also add some mystery to this long dance scene. Later, when shooting the audience, we can unify the illumination of the stage and the audience without having to adjust the color in post-production to unify the two contrasting scenes.
of illumination.”
Adrian Lane didn't need Ronald to explain, he figured out the beauty of this attention by himself, and he achieved it in one fell swoop.
"Ah, I'm really a fool, your method is right.
You know, Ronald, you are by no means a director who can only make exploitation films. Their evaluation of you is unfair. I think your "fast pace" does not mean that you cannot produce that kind of artistic feeling, but
Due to budget constraints, we could only shoot like this.
What a pity, if your film could have been carefully crafted, it would have been favored by the critics."
"You're exaggerating. Let's redo the lighting tomorrow and reshoot Ma Lin's scene." Ronald accepted all the praise from his colleagues.
"Okay, anyway, her scene is easy to film, so I'll have someone modify the background." Don Simpson answered from the side.